Pisarz said:
Quote by Jamesaritchie
And even more important, how far along is your second novel? By the time a first novel has made the rounds, a second novel should be starting them.
As a newbie trying to get an agent for a first novel, I've been wondering about this advice. I've read it elsewhere, too. If we (newbie, unpubbed-types) don't know what's "wrong" with the first novel, what incentive do we have to write another? Sure, I know it's always smart to hone the craft, but at what point is it a therapeutic exercise ("writing makes me feel good, even if no one sees it") and at what point is it a means to becoming publishable?
For me, it's a confidence problem. Oh, I have ideas for a second novel and I enjoy the art of writing, of course. Yet I can't bring myself to go through with work #2, and all that novel-writing and agent-hunting entails, if #1 doesn't catch anyone's interest. For what? To find out that my writing is just as unpublishable after the second novel as it was after the first? What if I write five novels and none of them get published--what benefit have I dervied besides the realization that I'm not cut out to be a writer? From a practical, my-aim-is-to-be-published standpoint, I worry that it may just be a waste of time.
I'm not trying to be contentious; I'm just trying to understand why more experienced writers advise newbies to move on to #2. I, for one, have lost the confidence to do so. Could you guys please elaborate?
That's like saying if you don't know how to play a piano on the first try, you may as well stop because you'll never get it right.
Why on earth would you believe your first effort at writing a novel is going to be any better than your first effort at playing the piano? To believe your first effort is going to be good enough to place you in the top one percent of the fourteen million other people out there who may have been working for years at honing their talent and improving their craft? That's not confidence, it's ego.
I don't talk about it much, but at one time I wanted to be a painter. I worked hard at it, I took all the courses, I studied the masters, etc. I simply lacked enough talent. But along the way I met an awful lot of painters, some of whom had tremendous amounts of talent. Not one of them was worth a damn when they started. Not one of them covered a first canvas in a way that would make anyone think they had talent.
Until the learned the craft, until they mastered form, technique, perspective, etc., they weren't much better than anyone else. And not one of them would have even imagined the first canvas they covered with paint should have been hung in a gallery, or on any wall except their mother's wall.
And most painters start when they're very, very young, and cover hundreds or thousands of canvases with paint before they hone their talent, and improve their craft, to the point where they can paint something worthwhile.
Darned few first novels sell, and most of the ones that do come from writers who have spent considerable time honing their talent and improving their craft in other areas of writing, be it with short stroies, articles, journalism, essays, an MFA, or just many college courses in creative writing, etc.
Writing is a process, and learning is a process. The more you do anything, the better you get at doing it. Everyone does have a natural limit. You have to have some degree of talent because skill and craft can only take you so far, but talent alone usually isn't enough, either.
And sometimes even a first sale isn't enough. Nora Roberts sold her first novel, and then had to write eight more before writing another novel anyone wanted to buy. How many would have given up after the next two or three novels failed to sell?
First novels can sell, but they're the lightning strikes, the winning lottery ticket, especially when they come from a writer who hasn't already spent years honing his talent and improving his craft. The number of first novels that sell? About one in 25,000, and most of these are from writers with some sort of background in writing.
Confidence is not believing you can get something right the first time you try it. That's ego. Confidence is believing that if you keep at it, if you put your nose against the grindstone and work long enough and hard enough, you'll reach a level where you can compete with the top one percent of anyone in any field. Confidence is believing you have room for improvement, and that hard work and many efforts will bring about that improvement.
Where would Stephen King be if he stopped after his first, unpublished novel? Of even after his third unpublished novel?
Perhaps you never will succeed. Perhaps you never will write a publlishable novel. There are no guarantees, and only a tiny fraction of those who try writing novels ever manage to sell one. There are roughly six million unpublished novels out there, and just under one percent of them will ever be published. This is just the way it is.
If you're looking for easy, if you're looking for a profession where success comes without long hours, hard work, and many, many efforts, this one ain't it. But if you're looking for a profession where long hours, hard work, and many, many efforts can separate you from the pack, can make you a success where those with more talent but less work ethic fail, then writing is perfect.
, and don't ever believe your work sucks.
Keep at it, you'll get there.
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